Clouds of pollution and other airborne materials are difficult to detect. Yet the concentration of these materials needs to be measured to enable those near the cloud to respond in an appropriate manner. Without an accurate assessment of the strength of the cloud unnecessary evacuations may be ordered or a needed evacuation may not be deemed necessary. The materials that can occur in these clouds include man-made pollution (e.g. a release from a chemical plant), natural pollution (e.g. volcanic fumes), and chemical and biological warfare agents. The difficulty of detecting these clouds arise for several reasons. First, the materials may be invisible and otherwise undetectable by human beings even at concentration levels that pose an immediate health threat. Second, the clouds tend to move with the wind so that, once released, they can travel long distances, thereby appearing without warning. Further, drafts, inversions, and other thermal gradients can cause the cloud to concentrate in some geographic areas (e.g. valleys) while dispersing rapidly from other areas (e.g. hilltops). Similarly, the cloud might be found at some altitudes and not found at others. Also, because these clouds might be found at some height above the ground, it may not be possible to place an instrument in the cloud short of flying a probe into the cloud. The clouds may also have irregular shapes with ill-defined boundaries (i.e. the cloud boundary may be marked by either a sharp or gradual concentration gradient or some combination of the two). Thus, where a particular cloud might be found is subject to a number of vagaries that cause difficulties in predicting where the cloud might exist.
One solution to these problems is to deploy a cloud of minute optical sensors into the suspected location(s) of the clouds. These clouds of minute sensors are sometimes referred to as responsive or “smart dust.” Recently, porous silicon optical sensors have become available for this application. Each of these sensors is manufactured from silicon that has been etched to create a porous surface. The etching process is tailored to create pores of a size, depth and number to enable the sensors to selectively bind to a particular, pre-selected material. When the sensors encounter that particular material, the material reacts with the silicon of the sensor. By various mechanisms that depend on the particular material involved, the reflectance spectrum of the silicon changes as a result of the reaction. Thus, observing the reflectance spectrum of the sensors yields a measure of the amount of the material that the sensors have encountered.
In practice, an intense electromagnetic energy source (e.g. a laser or an equivalent) illuminates the sensors so that the reflectance spectrum of the sensors can be observed. However, this practice suffers from several problems also. First, the electromagnetic energy (“light”) source and the detector that is used to measure the reflectance spectrum must be initially aligned and held in strict alignment during the measurement process. Maintaining the alignment can be quite difficult because, at times, either the source, sensor cloud, or detector will move relative to one and other. Also, environmental factors along the path that the light travels from the source, to the sensors, and then to the detector may cause an attenuation of the light at some of the frequencies that the sensor attenuates reflected light. As a result, when the light arrives at the detector from the sensor, it is difficult to ascertain whether the attenuation of the light was caused by the sensor's exposure to the material or due to the environmental factors.